israel accuses him of carrying out many, many attacks against israel. his funeral is today. and hamas says with this assassination, israel has opened the gates of hell. israel also says it's ready to enlarge this operation. it has called up its reservists and is ready for a ground offensive. >> alex, quick question here. what does the latest strike mean for the relative stability of that region? >> reporter: well, of course, this further destabilizes an already unstable region, what with the syrian war going on just to the north of us. everyone is looking towards egypt to broker some sort of deal between the militant groups and israel as they have done in the past. egypt, for its part, has withdrawn its ambassador from israel. so far, no progress has been made on that front. of course, the big question going into an obama second term is whether the palestinian peace process could get back on track. of course, this latest development, this escalation, pushes that hope further down the road. >> all right. certainly, we'll keep an eye on that throughout the morning. alex marqua